here's something that's been nagging at me; and maybe those who know more
about SGI can answer this.

Why is SGI seemingly planning on migrating to the Intel IA64 architecture?
(called by some the 'Itanic'). Compaq, HP, and possibly others are all
abandoning their own processor designs, in favor of this one.
what ever happened to product differentiation? when everyone is running the
same processor (and it's the same processor that you'll be able to buy and
put in your desktop system); how do you convince people that your hardware
is worth 10x more?

sure, you can have a different chipset on the motherboard, and different
interconnects on multiprocessor systems (there's no way that an HP Superdome
will be much like an SGI Origin, even if they did have the same processor);
but the difference will be much less.

I think the world will be poorer, for the lack of competition in processor
designs... Intel has a pretty big stake in the status quo; the shakeup
involved in going to the IA64 architecture has lost them ground to AMD.
without Alpha, MIPS, and PA-RISC processor teams working away; will we see
less innovation in the processor world? there'll certainly continue to be
research at universities, and independent groups; but with Intel holding an
even larger monopoly on processor markets, there may be less chance of new
processor designs making it to market. 

I think Linux, and other Open Source software is the tool with which to
break processor architecture monopolies. Intel gained it's hold, because it
was in bed with MS, and if you wanted to run MS software, you had to do it
on an Intel platform. want to run your old software? since you didn't have
the source code, you had to buy a new system that was compatible with the
old one. without the interchangeability of software and hardware; everyone
was led down the broad and easy path of the WinTel monopoly, despite it
being some of the crappiest technology around.
	in 1991, when Linux was just being conceived, lots of
technologically-inclined people thought we'd all be running Sparcs in 5
years. they knew what garbage the x86 design was; but they didn't count on
an ignorant public going out and buying what was handed to them by WinTel;
because they didn't know better, and they wanted to be compatible with
everyone else who had 'IBM PCs'.
	with Linux, if someone comes out with a new processor design (take a
look at http://www.f-cpu.de/), and convinces hardware makers to build
compatible hardware; it's possible to just port the OS and compiler,
recompile your Linux apps, and it's as easy to run on the new processor as
the old one. 

	so I guess I'm saying that even if Intel takes over even more of the
processor market; all hope is not lost, it's just going to take us a while
to break their stranglehold.

Carl Soderstrom.
-- 
Network Engineer
Real-Time Enterprises
(952) 943-8700